Want to read a short story au?

The Bruising of Qilwa is, indeed, a novella, with the text itself (not including the author's afterward) clocking in at just under 40,000 words. In my afterward, I mention that I had intended to write it as a short story, and it grew from there—Qilwa was therefore never meant to be a novel, although I can see why people would want it to be.

There are several reasons why I chose not to expand Qilwa into a novel (publishing contract aside). As early as the first draft of the short story (which was actually novelette length), I knew the beats I wanted to hit and, simply, they weren't novel length. I always intended Qilwa to be a slice-of-life during the midst of both a genocide and a pandemic, reflecting on issues of migration and otherness. This choice also makes more sense given that Qilwa was not the first story I wrote in this specific secondary world; Firuz's story was a side project as I explored the consequences of the genocide happening in their home country of Dilmun. Thus, The Bruising of Qilwa was never meant to give a whole exploration of this world, only a snapshot. Finally, the structure reflects its thematic concerns: being a multi-marginalized person frequently means dealing with everything, everywhere, all at once, with no room to breathe even in the best of times. The Bruising of Qilwa is a novella bursting at the seams for that exact reason.

It is not! I wrote Qilwa before the 2020 pandemic; the first draft of the short story was written summer of 2019. The blood-bruising is actually based on an exaggerated/absolute worst-case scenario of Vitamin B12 deficiency. I looked up mechanisms B12 is involved in and could make the case for many of the symptoms I wanted to showcase in the blood-bruising, then added a sprinkling of magic. Qilwa is not my first plague story, and none of them have been based on Covid-19.

I would aruge that Firuz is not passive, nor do they lack agency per se; they are reactive and doing the best they can within their circumstances, juggling caregiving, work, and c-PTSD. Whereas many stories in speculative fiction center a single "hero" whose actions can change the world, the reality is, most of us are everyday folk who have no control over the goings-on of those in power. Readers who are in positions of dominance or privilege frequently have difficulty understanding what it means to move through the world without that type of "agency." The Bruising of Qilwa is a story of multi-marginalized migrants who come to a hostile enviornment and have no ability to affect large-scale societal change.

I highly recommend Vida Cruz's "We Are the Mountain: A Look at the Inactive Protagonist" for more on being "agentive" in Western literature.

I have many different influences as a writer—my favorite authors are Kazuo Ishiguro and NK Jemisin. But unlike many of my other stories, Qilwa had one major inspiration: look no further than Dragon Age 2; Qilwa is my reaction to Anders and Fereldens in Kirkwall.

While I do write for young adult audiences, Qilwa was written with adult audiences in mind. That being said, it can be friendly for teen audiences, given that there are issues of identity discussed throughout (but do mind the content notes, particularly the medical gore, and that Firuz is thirty years old and concerned with issues of caregiving).

Authors don't tend to have control over whether or not maps are included in their books—they tend to be a rarity and a bonus (and an added expense for the publisher). That being said, there is a map of the Free Democratic City-State of Qilwa in the Rainbow Crate special edition hardcover, and one on my Instagram.

The short answer to the second question is: sort of! Years ago, when I was first designing this world, I did the "filing the serial numbers off" method of worldbuilding. Qilwans were initially based on the historic trade sultanate of Kilwa; Dilmunis were based on the Muslim Arabs who conquered West Asia and North Africa; and Sassanians were based on Persians and Iranians. Yet as my own understanding of both writing and history grew, including a better understanding of the complexities of colonization, I allowed these peoples to become their own things based on worldbuilding details while still retaining those core influences. In fact, I kept the name "Sassanians" specifically because I wanted to signal that I am inputting one real-life culture into the books: my own. This is my gift to Iranian and Persian readers.

I hope I'm lucky enough to explore the details in other stories set in the Qilverse. For the purposes of The Bruising of Qilwa, here's what you need to know:

• The Sassanian Empire (often called Old Sassanid), located in the mainland of Sassan, ruled for about 1000 years. This empire was one based in knowledge, culture, and magic rather than sole military might. (If you've played Sid Meier's Civilization, think of them as going for a cultural victory.) One of their early cultural conquests was the Queendom of Qilwa, a nearby island with a mighty mercantile and trade presence; they entered into a satrap-metropole type of relationship, which is how Old Sassanid governed most of its colonies.
• About 300 years before the events of The Bruising of Qilwa, a group of people came from the sea with a new religion and type of magic in tow. These were the Dilmunis, who sought to and eventually succeeded in conquering and settling in Sassan (renaming it Dilmun). However, the Dilmunis' religion centered knowledge, culture, and magic—the same values that built the Sassanian Empire—and rather than seeking to eradicate Sassanians entirely, they instead subsumed them and attempted to merge the two peoples.
• As the Dilmuni Conquest of Sassanid was happening, Dilmun made bargains with Sassanid's various colonies in order to secure their victory, promising every colony—including Qilwa—freedom from the Sassanian Empire. While most of the colonies, over the next many decades, were slowly given independence, Qilwa was not. About a decade before the events of The Bruising of Qilwa, the people of Qilwa revolted and fought for their independence, eventually establishing a democractic city-state in the aftermath.

Imagine you're going about your everyday life in the place where you and your family were born and raised. Then, one day, there's a national crisis. You don't really understand what caused the crisis or even fully understand the details of that crisis; you just know that you and your loved ones are in danger the longer you stay. You and your family are able to escape to a nearby country that has a culture somewhat similar to yours, but still different, with a different dominant language, and you don't have contact to the people in your home country to understand what exactly happened regarding the crisis that forced you to leave.

This is what happens to Firuz and their family. There are two concurrent crises happening in their home country, and no one fully understands whether either are related to one-another, or even how either of these issues started, or where they're going. But it would be remiss not to mention that they affected why the Jafaris and other Sassanians left Dilmun to begin with.

Everyday people rarely have all the "facts" concerning issues on the national scale. It is only with time that we may uncover some of the truths.

This is a spoiler-loaded question, so I'll answer it vaguely: desperate times drive people to desperate measures, such that they have to believe the ends justify the means, and have to weigh the worth of a few when faced with the lives of the many—and sometimes, people just snap. I'd love to explore this character's backstory, which helps explain their actions at the end, in the future!